Threat Intelligence and Cyber Threat Management (CTM) Protection Update for the 3rd week of March

New Detection Technique - Avtech

Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in the video surveillance products of Avtech, one of the world's leading manufacturers of a full range of surveillance products. Due to the apparent use of a common codebase, and lack of various security mitigations throughout their products, the discovered vulnerabilities will work on numerous other devices in the Avtech family. Such actions can be seen in the new ARM Linux malware ELF_IMEIJ.A, which exploits a CGI Directory vulnerability in CloudSetup.cgi to trigger the malware download.

We've added IDS signatures and the following correlation rule to detect this activity:

Cylance research indicated that Misdat is an early backdoor used by the Dust Storm group, who have been operational since early 2010. The group has utilized various operational techniques such as spear phishing, watering hole attacks, and numerous zero-day attacks.

We've added IDS signatures and the following correlation rule to detect this activity:

System Compromise, Trojan infection, Misdat

New Detection Technique - Remote Access Tools

The typical attack pattern starts by exploiting a vulnerability and then installing malware, which often includes a Remote Administration Toolkit (RAT) to gain control of the compromised machine. We've added IDS signatures and the following correlation rules to detect new RAT activity:

System Compromise, Malware RAT, Snow

System Compromise, Malware RAT, SpyLuk

We've also added IDS signatures and updated correlation rules to detect the following RAT activity:

System Compromise, Malware RAT, PlugX

System Compromise, Malware RAT, Remcos/Remvio

System Compromise, Malware RAT, njRAt

New Detection Technique - Ransomware

In the past week, we've seen an uptick in ransomware activity in the wild. We've added IDS signatures and the following correlation rules to detect new ransomware families:

System Compromise, Ransomware infection, Locker

We also added IDS signatures and updated correlation rules to detect the following ransomware families:

System Compromise, Ransomware infection, Cerber

System Compromise, Ransomware infection, Sage

System Compromise, Ransomware infection, Samsam

System Compromise, Ransomware infection, Torrent locker

New Detection Techniques

We've added the following correlation rules as a result of recent exploit activity:

System Compromise, C&C Communication, ZLoader SSL activity

System Compromise, Trojan infection, Clifigcon

System Compromise, C&C Communication, Destover SSL activity

Updated Detection Technique - Exploit Kits

Exploit kits are used in "drive-by downloads." Undetectable by normal users, these kits are embedded in websites by attackers. When a user browses to a website hosting an exploit kit, the kit attempts all known attack methods to compromise the user and install malware on the user's machine. This approach is a common attack vector and a major source of infections for end users. Cybercriminals constantly change the patterns they use within their code to evade detection.

We've added new IDS signatures to include the list of certificates identified by Abuse.ch to be associated with malware of botnet activities. The updated correlation rules use this information to detect C&C communications related to several malware families, including:

StoneDrill is a new wiper malware variant of the notorious Shamoon worm, which devastated a Saudi Arabian company in 2012 by wiping over 35,000 computers. While StoneDrill has similarities to Shamoon, to better evade detection it uses new tools and techniques, has a functional ransomware component, and is less reliant on command and control (C&C) servers.

We've added IDS signatures and updated the following correlation rule to detect this activity:

System Compromise, Targeted Malware, StoneDrill

Updated Detection Technique – DustySky

DustySky is composed of multiple pieces: a dropper, keylogger, and backdoor. It attempts to avoid running in a virtual machine and checks for the presence of anti-virus software. DustySky is known to be used by the Molerats attacker group.